So I currently am trying to fix someone's broken 83+ at school.

At first I thought it was bricked- pulling all 5 batteries didn't do anything; the LCD was frozen on the Y= screen with lots of error messages.

Then I discovered (once I hooked it up to a laptop) that I could communicate to it with TI Connect. But I can't fix the LCD...

Netham45 mentioned on IRC there was a fix for this, but I don't know where it is (neither did he). Any ideas?

maybe resend the OS...

maybe resend the OS...

I did try resending the OS, but TI Connect gave me an error in the last part of transfer... in theory that means the calc is OS-less right now. I didn't have any other time to work on it after that, and now I'm at home- without the calc (I gave it back to him because there wasn't anything I could really do...)

There is still some weird stuff though. After the OS transfer failed I could apparently turn the calc on or off (the screen contrast would get darker, and then lighter). When I tried popping batteries at that point, the garbled Y= screen would reappear for a few seconds, then go away.

Mhmm normally when distortion only occurs inside some Mirage games or TI-Boy SE, you need ALCDfix. Otherwise I am not sure

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/366/36608.html

Otherwise I think Doors CS may have a LCD fix option, but if it has to be accessed from menus with the mouse cursor, then good luck selecting it with no screen .

Except this is an 83+, not an 84+/83+ SE/84+ SE. ALCDFIX is to make the LCD drivers behave like they do on an 83+, isn't it?

Hmm... you mentioned OS 1.17 was unstable? Lots of 83+s come with that preinstalled, don't they? I can't check now what it was running though... also because I don't have the calc with me.

Wait...you pulled all five batteries and the error message was still there?  Is the screen burned in or something?

No, that's not what I meant. Once I put the batteries back, the garbage was still on the screen.

It's not an error message precisely- it's random gibberish in the Y= menu,

Sorry, when I wrote that post I was trying to do about four things at the same time...

Well, I would say that without Kerm Martian's soldering skills, that calculator is done for. I would assume that the LCD driver went bad or something similar. Removing all 5 batteries clears the LCD ram too, so the fact that the image came back is not a good sign. At least with mine, when I remove all five batteries, the screen gets some weird black with white dots display.

I would say that one idea to fix this would be to leave all 5 batteries out for a long time. I don't know how long is necessary, but since the calculator is basically dead, it wouldn't hurt to leave them out for a few days.

A new OS would help, but I doubt that that would fix a dead screen like that. Perhaps if you get an OS running, someone can make a program to throw every different command at the LCD to see if it can be convinced back into working.

I haven't tried your second suggestion, but I will tomorrow.

I didn't try the first one either. I did pull one battery and hold down DEL as I put it back in, but if you need to hold it for a dozen seconds or so I didn't hold it for long enough.

EDIT: The problem of posting while other people are posting.

I have no idea what he was doing. He said it stopped working after he changed the batteries.

I'll take the calc tomorrow and try leaving all batteries out over the weekend, and see what happens...

Hmm... what might work is remote controlling the calc from another calc?

Take all the batteries out and let it sit for a day or two.

If you can get it back to reasonable state where you can Reset all memory try that. If you can back up everything before hand go for it.

I know my 83+ was almost unusable. I had some ASM game fuck it all up or maybe it was the mario level editor. I had just a jumble of crap on the screen and after taking the batteries out for a few days I was able to get it to turn on. Once I reset everything I got everything pretty much back to normal but the calc would almost instantly crash after turning it on. I let everything sit for months and put in 4 fresh batteries and it seems pretty much ok now. Of course I did a bunch of Ram clears and updated the OS once I got it working pretty good.

Like I said take the batteries out for a few days and see what comes after that.

Edit: Actually that isnt true all of what I posted. Mind you this was like 5-6 years ago. I do remember now that I couldn't transfer over an OS either right away. Using the del trick. I tried sending it from my comp and another calc and that wouldn't work. Eventually I did get it to work though. What is the other key press you can do is it the "clear" key? One of them does a ram clear I think. I had to do that a bunch of times and like I said I left the batteries out for a good day or two.

I seem to remember having an issue like this, but it seems to me that my solution was to get it exchanged, so that's not much help...

ALCDFIX use "delay ports" that aren't present on the 83+. These ports stop the calculator (that or reset a status bit in port 2) for a certain amount of time after using the LCD.